Study shows growth in second screen users

Television viewers were once called couch potatoes. Many are becoming more active while watching now, judging by the findings in a new report that illustrates the explosive growth in people who watch TV while connected to social media on smartphones and tablets.Associated Press file

NEW YORK -- Television viewers were once called couch
potatoes. Many are becoming more active while watching now, judging by
the findings in a new report that illustrates the explosive growth in
people who watch TV while connected to social media on smartphones and
tablets.

The Nielsen company said that one in three people using
Twitter in June sent messages at some point about the content of
television shows, an increase of 27 percent from only five months
earlier. And that was before the Olympics, which was probably the first
big event to illustrate the extent of second screen usage.

"Twitter
has become the second screen experience for television," said Deirdre
Bannon, vice president of social media at Nielsen.

Social
networking is becoming so pervasive that the study found nearly a third
of people aged 18-to-24 reported using the sites while in the bathroom.

An
estimated 41 percent of tablet owners and 38 percent of smartphone
owners used their device while also watching television at least once a
day, Nielsen said.

That percentage hasn't changed much; in fact,
40 percent of smartphone owners reported daily dual screen usage a year
earlier, Nielsen said. The difference is that far more people own these
devices and they are using them for a longer period of time. The company
estimated that Americans spent a total of 157.5 billion minutes on
mobile devices in July 2012, nearly doubling the 81.8 billion the same
month a year earlier.

"There are big and interesting implications," Bannon said. "I think both television networks and advertisers are onto it."

The
social media can provide networks with real-time feedback on what they
are doing. The performance of moderators at presidential debates this
fall was watched more closely than perhaps ever before, because people
were instantly taking on Twitter to provide their own critiques.

It
also makes for some conflicting information: Twitter buzzed with
complaints last summer about NBC's policy of airing many Olympics events
from London on tape delay, yet ratings for the prime-time Olympics
telecast soared past expectations.

The increase in people watching
television and commenting about it online would seem to run counter to
another big trend this fall: more people recording programs and watching
them at a later hour. Those contrary trends both increase the value of
live event programming like awards shows or sporting events.

The
Nielsen study also found that 35 percent of people who used tablets
while watching TV looked up information online about the program they
were watching. A quarter of tablet owners said they researched coupons
or deals for products they saw advertised on television

As rapid
as the use of social media while on television is growing in the United
States, it already lags behind other countries. Nielsen said that 63
percent of people in the Middle East or Africa report using social media
while on TV, and 52 percent of people in Latin America.

The U.S.
media survey is based on a representative sample of 1,998 adults in
Nielsen's regular TV ratings panel, conducted online between July 19 and
Aug. 8. Nielsen's global survey involved more than 28,000 people in 51
countries and was taken between March 23 and April 12, 2011.

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